Moi? Not us!
Remember the crux of this issue. The theory has been falsified and without correlation you cannot have causation.
INTRODUCTION
There is a growing tendency by Western citizens to blame every one else for any misfortune, and avoid any culpability for our own actions. While demanding accountability for every one else, we avoid it for ourselves.
We are the people being deceived and misled. We should stop complaining about it – and set about fixing this problem.
If we are easily fooled then people will want to fool us a lot more. Also, once people see how easy it is to fool us, many more people will attempt to mislead us. This is a downward spiral that we have to reverse.
If we improved our own behaviour, identified the deceit, and then sanctioned those trying to deceive us, there would be far less bad behaviour. Such behaviour is reprehensible and needs to be harshly sanctioned if we are to have any chance of reversing this trend.
Then our World would be a better place.
WHERE TO START
We can learn about such behaviour and be suitably unimpressed, but this is unlikely to change such bad behaviour. We need to do more.
If we are difficult to deceive and we sanction those who try to deceive us, such behaviour will no longer be rewarded as much and should decrease.
A small step that we can take is to initially trust no-one and check out everything we are being told. It doesn’t mean ignore everyone, but we should push ourselves to be sceptical and, by checking, we will at least detect the not so clever lies and deceptions already discussed on this website.
We can no longer trust the “labels” that are given to groups of people. We cannot automatically trust politicians, the Media, scientists, the Greens or the United Nation’s organisations etc. solely because they wear an impressive label. We can no longer automatically trust anyone because of the label they carry. We must concentrate on the issue and not on the person or his label.
We have been deceived enough times by so many groups today, that automatic trust should never be given. Trust needs to be earned.
When we discover we are being misled, it is important to go back to the source of the advice and point out the errors. It could have been an innocent mistake.
However, if you suspect that the misdirection was deliberate, you need to sanction the source so they know you won’t listen to them in the future and will warn everyone that they are untrustworthy.
The benefits of doing so is not just an improvement in our society’s morality, but will improve our decision making saving time, resources and money, that can be used on other improvements in our society.
At this stage we are still likely to be misled by professionals. We need to regain our rationality and our critical thinking skills to defeat those that are more clever in deceiving us. Once again this requires effort from us.
MORE WORK
Rationality and critical thinking skills do not happen naturally – they have to be taught. Today, there is no one teaching such skills. So, if we are to fix this problem we need to train ourselves.
This all takes time and if we attempt to comprehensively learn about logic and illogic, it will take a significant amount of time. It is also a very dry topic and can become boring. If we find ourselves giving up because of this we should lower our ambitions and focus on the most used illogical arguments and deception tools used today.
We will find this approach rewarding as we can employ our new knowledge straight away and be rewarded when we detect deception. With some success ‘under our belt’, we will find we want to learn more.
We would love to have perfect knowledge, but since our society’s irrationalism and lack of critical thinking is increasing rapidly, any movement in the opposite direction will be rewarding. Something is better than nothing.
COLLECTIVE WORK
Our society will not improve until all three levels in our education system give priority to teaching critical thinking skills and logical thinking. Presently, our education system claims it is teaching critical thinking skills, but it is a shadow of what is needed to reverse this trend. Through no fault of their own, teachers who are irrational will always teach logical thinking and critical thinking skills poorly. It is a case of the blind leading the blind.
Harsh words you might say. Stand back and explain this. We see thousands of students around Australia, encouraged by their schools, taking part in demonstrations in the centre of the cities demanding our politicians take action to prevent a “Henny Penny” tale from happening. Not only are these children brainwashed at home, but they are now are brainwashed at school. They don’t have the skills to detect that they are being misled. Next is an example of the damage this can cause.
A teacher (teacher A), teaching students the buoyancy laws of physics stated that once ice was floating in water there will be no change to water levels when the ice melts. Then showed students an experiment supporting the law. A student applying this new knowledge asked ‘teacher A’ if this meant that when the floating Arctic Ice melted there would not be catastrophic sea level rises. Teacher A, maintaining her professionalism, said they were not here to discuss political issues like global warming but were discussing the the buoyancy laws and all the students had seen the proof of that law.
Then a group of these brainwashed children sought out ‘teacher B’, that they knew was a Green supporter, and breathlessly told her that “Teacher A does not believe that melting Arctic Ice will cause catastrophic sea level rises.” Quite unprofessionally, (without talking to ‘teacher A‘) ‘teacher B’ told the students that teacher A didn’t know what she was talking about as all the scientists agreed that melting Arctic ice will cause catastrophic sea level rises.
This is a wonderful example where irrational people assume beliefs, opinions, feelings and views ‘trump’ facts and science. Even though these students had seen the proof, they were encouraged to ignore it and believe in the Green brainwashing. Why teach science at this school if Green teachers are going to undermine the science teaching so comprehensively.
Yet we are relying on teacher B, and a lot of others like her, to to teach logic, facts and critical thinking skills to our young students. We have a problem, that first needs to be recognised.
How do we cure all three levels of our education system of this disease?
We must improve our critical thinking skills to help us overcome this problem. Reading 5.2.1 discusses this further.
FAILING TO SEE REALITY
In Reading 5.2.1 we read that Dr James Hansen, a NASA scientist advising Al Gore, was having difficulty in recognising ‘reality’ and the ‘truth’ that his predictions had failed.
He had predicted that within 15 years, there would be metres of sea level rises that would cover a freeway in New York and the beaches of the Florida Keys. Fifteen years later, when taken to both locations he found the ocean was not covering either the highway or beaches. However, Hansen declared his predictions were still correct.
Such a reaction surprises most of us, so we need to look further. Is Hansen doggedly sticking to his predictions knowing that they were wrong, or has Hansen lost sight of reality because of what social psychologists call cognitive dissonance?
Cognitive dissonance is one problem that we all should identify quickly and ‘nip it in the bud’.
When we allow our feelings, opinions, beliefs and views to become so strong there is a real danger of us no longer recognising reality. The pain of seeing our beliefs challenged by reality is so strong we will no longer adjust our beliefs to match reality. Instead we will ignore reality and live in a fantasy world with our beliefs. Social psychologist, Leon Festinger, labelled this disease as “cognitive dissonance”.
In the 1950s, social psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues embedded themselves in a cult led by a doomsday prophet named Dorothy Martin. The cult members believed that spacemen called the “Guardians” were coming to collect them in flying saucers to save them from a coming flood that would destroy humanity.
Not surprisingly, neither the floods nor the spacemen ever arrived. Rather than seeing this reality and adjusting their beliefs, the opposite happened. Reality was ignored and their beliefs were strengthened. Reading 5.2.2 discusses Festinger’s work and does give an explanation about the Green followers’ present behaviour.
They also believe in a ‘doomsday” tale that is not supported by reality. As every Green prediction fails these followers ignore reality and the strength of their beliefs increase. By ignoring reality they operate in a fantasy world that denies any reality that conflicts with their beliefs.
For example, for more than twenty years Green followers had insisted that sceptics only listen to Green scientists. However when all their Green scientists agreed that there was a ‘hiatus’ in global warming which meant that the Greens theory had been falsified, they decided not to believe in their own scientists nor sceptical scientists – indeed no science at all. Their desire to have global warming to continue had them abandoning reality and believing that global warming was continuing uninterrupted in their fantasy world.
CONCLUSION
If we collectively stop thinking with labels and personalities, investigate the issue itself, and critically check what we are told, we have a much better chance of identifying the truth. With the early identification of reality, there is significantly less risk of our beliefs hardening to such an extent that we will ignore reality when it arrives later.
So, improving our critical thinking and reasoning will not only reduce the amount of misdirection and deceit but it will also help us recognise reality in our society.